


Self Made Cages

by cunning_capra



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Lets be honest Dima is too hard on himself, Overthinking, Post Time Skip, Romance, Sad Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Self-Hatred, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), suggestive imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28235895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cunning_capra/pseuds/cunning_capra
Summary: “Selfish to love?” Byleth asks and he had hoped she wouldn't. Her mouth screws up into some unreadable expression, thumb softly skimming the back of his hand, and then holding it more tightly. “I think...loving someone is the least selfish thing you could do.”Dimitri struggles with the concepts of love and wanting.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	Self Made Cages

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bones by MS MR
> 
> In the words of my good friend [Zeiskyte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeiskyte/pseuds/Zeiskyte) (whose work you should check out), "Past Capra was really going through it". 
> 
> A belated Happy Birthday to our lord and savior, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. I don't know what it is about me writing angsty couples getting together with the POV character positive it won't work out, but I'm going to not think about it thanks.

  
“I've been thinking,” Dimitri says, voice wavering only a little, “about my stepmother.”

The room is dim, lit only by a few errant candles, now almost stubs. His teacup rattles against the saucer, so he places it on the table. The chamomile has done nothing for his nerves this night he finds, glancing haplessly around the room for a distraction. Nearly all the surfaces save for this small end table are covered in papers and books and diagrams. It is unfortunate the professor never got an office of her own, he thinks.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. What had driven him to knock on the professor’s door, when the candles were burning already so low, the night cloying and deep. What ancient wound had split open in his chest, in his dreams, that he’d dare darken her doorstep with his concerns?

“Dimitri?” Byleth asks, dragging him back up from the deep well of his agitation. His attention snaps to her, to her tired eyes and the tea she sips, and he feels a stab of remorse. 

“Sorry,” he says, looking down at his traitorously shaking hands. He's never been good at subterfuge, never being able to hide anything for long before the dam would burst, “This is... well, it's hard. But I'd like it if you would hear me out.”

She inclines her head to him, crossing her legs from where she sits on the bed and he takes a deep breath.

“I've been thinking about my stepmother,” he begins again, “and about love.”

He dares not to look at her, so he continues, staring at the wall just behind her instead.

“I thought... well. I loved her. She was the mother I had never known, and I loved her fiercely. But now. Knowing what I do. I wonder if we stifled her. The love of a man and a child who were not her own. I wonder if we suffocated her in it, and our own need to love. If we were selfish and drove her... drove her to...”

“I don't think you can blame yourself for the actions of others,” Byleth says softly, a lifeboat in the tumultuous sea of Dimitri's thoughts. “She should have loved you. She should have been there for the life she chose for herself, and looked forward to the future.” 

She offers her hand, and he takes it, without a thought, looking down at their entwined fingers. A shiver passes through him and she squeezes.

“Is it selfish? To have loved her, as a mother while she was mourning her own life, her own child?” He knows he's shaking now, but he does nothing to conceal it. “I cannot remember a single smile on her face, and I do not know if it is time, or pain, or the knowledge I hold now that makes it so. I cannot. I cannot help but worry that I will make the mistake again. To love someone else too deeply, to the point of suffering. To love someone who does not wish to be loved. I. I worry that I am _selfish_.”

“Selfish to love?” She asks and he had hoped she wouldn't. Her mouth screws up into some unreadable expression, thumb softly skimming the back of his hand, and then holding it more tightly. “I think... loving someone is the least selfish thing you could do.”

“Oh,” he says, swallowing thickly and looking at their hands, then back up at her.

The candlelight bathes Byleth in soft light, leaning towards him across the small table, eyes searching his. The result is devastating. Dimitri does not yet know what it means, that look, but _he wants to learn_. He craves the revelation curling in the twist of her lips, yearns for the understanding of her authoritative mouth -

“Dimitri,” is all she says, and he is hers.

He falls to his knees - as an acolyte to divine is Dimitri to Byleth. Her hand cups his cheek, and he turns reverently into it to kiss the calloused flesh of her palm, teeth grazing her thumb.

He wants to indulge himself in her, in the taste and feel – wants to be swallowed up in her, used by her, needed by her.

Beast, they call him. Monster. He feels monstrous in his want, altogether too small and unworthy, and yet too large as well. Too much. He wants to hold her hand tightly when she offers and wants to tear out his own beating heart and call it hers.

He wants to be her everything and her nothing. He wants to claim and be claimed. His hands itch to touch, even as his mind screams through the agony of his passion that he is _not allowed._

He is but a moth drawn to flame – licking hot against his senses, till he knows not what is pleasure, or what is pain. 

“You are loved, Dimitri,” she murmurs to him, trying to use her hand to raise his head. “It is not selfish to love.” Her eyes dart to his mouth, and away, and it's like something long-dormant has rumbled awake inside his chest. An ache, bone-deep and familiar curls through this body and oh. He worships her.

She leans in, and his breath catches forcefully in his ribs, sharp and painful, as delicately, gently, her fingers graze his temple. Byleth brushes his hair behind his ear, thumb pressing gently against the thick raised scar of his right eye. He releases his breath in a stutter.

He can feel only the ghost of her touch there, the surrounding skin prickling at the foreign sensation of another's hand. He shudders, the intimacy not lost on him as her touch trails down his cheek, before disappearing completely. 

“Byleth,” he murmurs, and she meets him halfway, mouth careful and unsure against his. He trembles at the contact, her hand still curled along the square of his jaw. He feels alive and present, in a way he hasn't in years, and his hand curls into her long hair, burrowing in the base of her neck. It feels _right_.

She laughs when they pull apart, something soft and low, and Dimitri takes her hand in his. He watches the amusement flicker through her eyes, the way her mouth curls in delight when he presses it close to his chest in awe. She is much changed from when they first met - reserved and stumbling through the world as if only half awake. 

“You are lovely,” he says and flushes at the admission as if they hadn't been kissing just moments before.

She shakes her head, curling her hand in the cotton of his nightshirt, and tugging him close. Her head falls into the crook of his neck, right arm curling up and around his shoulder blade, and he shivers, momentarily overwhelmed.

The alluring whisper of opportunity, of the future, sprawl open ahead of him, her lips pressed gently to his pulse and if he dares to dream, dares to hope -

She is a book waiting to be read, pages begging to be spread open under his palm, and he is nothing but a reverent scholar, hungry for knowledge, for understanding for love love _love_ -

He is undeserving, but she calls to him and he _wants_. He wants to lose himself in her soft skin. To drown and never surface again.

He loves her.

But his hands are covered in blood, his dreams soaked in screams. The ghosts of the past have not taken lightly to their new king. And Dimitri in return has not taken easily to their heavy weight upon his chest.

In the end, he knows how this war, this story, ends.

He cannot have her, and he will not have her. He has sins on his shoulders and death at his door. It has never been a question - when this war _does_ end, so shall he.

He will not destroy another with the weight of his love.

They are one and the same – the rage, the destruction. He knows he is too far gone, that he is cruel, that he is unerringly marching towards death, towards _the end_.

She is not meant for him.

Even so... even so. He buries his face in her hair, presses her hand to his beating, bleeding heart. 

He hopes that the end reaches for him, with knowing eyes and proffered hand; that death will spare him this small remorse. He wants to fall into it, as one would fall in love. Slowly, passionately. 

Painfully.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on twitter at [@cunningcapra](https://twitter.com/cunningcapra)


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